homesickness

Definitions

WordNet 3.6

nhomesicknessa longing to return home

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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

nhomesicknessA depressed state of mind in persons away from home; nostalgia. It is characterized by an intense longing for home and the society of absent friends; it may also involve profound interference with nutrition, and give rise to further mental disturbance marked by delirium, incoherence, hallucination, or suicidal attempts. Generally the word signifies only a temporary or occasional depression of spirits from a longing for the renewal of former associations, actual or severe illness from this cause being rare.

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Quotations

Edgar Watson Howe

“The worst feeling in the world is the homesickness that comes over a man occasionally when he is at home.”

Robert Frost

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

Usage

In literature:

But after the early homesickness wore off, a great attachment for England took its place.

"Benjamin Franklin" by John Torrey Morse, Jr.

Now the first excitement of her arrival and unpacking was over, she had relapsed into a piteous fit of homesickness.

"The Princess of the School" by Angela Brazil

Of course he thought, with a little homesickness, of the home dinner-table.

"Crowded Out o' Crofield" by William O. Stoddard

I suppose she is homesick.

"Mary Rose of Mifflin" by Frances R. Sterrett

She was very young when her baby came and she used to get wildly homesick.

"Old Rail Fence Corners" by Various

An unutterable homesickness overwhelms him.

"Oswald Langdon" by Carson Jay Lee

And the girl sat there wondering vaguely why she was not homesick.

"Peak and Prairie" by Anna Fuller

It's pretty early to be homesick, old boy.

"The Forbidden Trail" by Honoré Willsie

Watching it she forgot, for the moment, her anxiety and mounting homesickness.

"The Adventures of Maya the Bee" by Waldemar Bonsels

Give a friendly pat to one of the big trees for me and say you found a girl in New York who is homesick.

"Joan of Arc of the North Woods" by Holman Day

And if you get homesick you come right home.

"Patchwork" by Anna Balmer Myers

I think it is partly because Graeme is homesick.

"Janet's Love and Service" by Margaret M Robertson

Oh, dear, I'm so homesick.

"Marjorie Dean High School Freshman" by Pauline Lester

She said she was homesick.

"The Opened Shutters" by Clara Louise Burnham

At Omaha the guards from the western division relieved their homesick eastern brothers.

"Lady Luck" by Hugh Wiley

After all, it was very sweet, this foolishness of these Southern people, and it somehow made her homesick.

"The Clansman" by Thomas Dixon

I was homesick for the mountains in a month.

"Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger" by Hamlin Garland

Are you always so homesick when you go away?

"The Quality of Mercy" by W. D. Howells

I got homesick and went back, but the next time I left, I left for fair.

"Money Magic" by Hamlin Garland

HOMESICK and weary she wandered about in a strange city, knowing not even the language.

"Futurist Stories" by Margery Verner Reed

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In poetry:

And then I thinks a cove like me
Ain't got no right to roam;
For I'm homesick when I puts to sea
And seasick when I'm home.